CHICAGO — McDonald’s acknowledged Wednesday that rivals have been better at responding to customers’ changing tastes and laid out the first steps it hopes will turnaround its sales slump in the United States, including taking eight items off the menu.
Chief executive Don Thompson and Mike Andres, the president of McDonald’s USA, met with analysts and investors in Oak Brook, Ill., two days after the world’s largest restaurant company posted its worst monthly U.S. sales in more than 13 years.
Andres, who returned to McDonald’s in October, said McDonald’s plans to take eight items off of the U.S. menu, which is being updated next month. It also plans to cut the number of extra value meals to 11, from 16. The executives did not lay out all of the items that will be eliminated, but suggested they could be things such as one version of a McWrap. The McWrap has been flagged as an item that often takes too long to prepare.
“The pace of change outside of McDonald’s has become faster than perhaps the pace of change internally,” Andres said during a short presentation on Wednesday morning.